Salt and Stone
by Fairies Masquerade
Summary: "Another camp, another group calling themselves a family, another set of open doors. She wondered how many knives were hidden in the shadows, waiting to stab them in the back." - Primarily a Carol story, set five years after the events of Season 4.
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N:** I have to confess, I'm not entirely sure where this is going to take me. I can't promise anything. This is an idea that simply won't leave me alone, so I'm seeing if I can't work it out._

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the characters or plot lines from 'The Walking Dead'. Just this random idea of mine._

_**Spoilers:** Canon up through 4x15 "Us". EXTREMELY AU after that._

* * *

The sun was setting, the last rays of light dancing across the lake leaving long shadows in its wake. It reminded her of a line from a book she'd read once, longer ago than she really cared to remember.

Winter was coming. She could feel it in the air, the bitter chill in the wind that snapped at her cheeks and left her red and raw. She could see it in the frost that covered the plants, giving a silver glow to the last of the fall leaves that clung to their brittle, pale branches and in the thin sheen of ice that clung to the top of the lake like a thin skin. Here and there, the brown and rust red landscape was dotted with tiny splashes of color, the last wildflowers braving the slow drop into the cold of winter.

_Look at the flowers._

She never slept more than an hour or two a night anymore. Too many memories morphed into nightmares that jolted her screaming from the abyss of unsettled sleep and left her silent and trembling, curled into a ball in the darkest shadows of whatever shelter they found themselves in until the first fingers of dawn made their way to her.

_You feel it. It's a part of you now._

Her hair was longer now, unruly silver curls that whipped around her face and tumbled over her shoulders. She wondered how she looked; if the constant weariness and lack of sleep showed in lines across her face yet. It had been ages since she'd looked at herself in a mirror just to see herself. She should have avoided mirrors like the plague; instead, she'd embraced them, taking hours to stare into her own eyes and work on tamping down the anguish and despair that had been reflected there until nothing remained but the hard stare of the consummate survivor. Nothing that would let the random wanderers they'd stumbled across know that she could be hurt, that she was so full of grief that she wondered if she'd ever feel anything light again. To feel was to invite more pain, more death.

_The people who are living are haunted by the dead._

She'd learned how to be cold after all. Rick would be proud. She wondered if he was even still alive; if _any_ of them were. She wasn't sure it really mattered anymore.

"Carol?"

_Mom?_

"Don't call me mom," she said, the words leaping out of her mouth before she could really think about it. _Well, shit._

"I didn't-"

"I know." Carol Peletier sighed, shaking her head to rid herself of the maudlin thoughts of the past she could never seem to escape from as she turned to the child at her side. "I'm sorry. What is it, sweetie?" She reached out and ran a hand through the girl's windswept snarl of dark brown hair. Judith had the clear, kind eyes of her mother and the same dimpled smile, but in every other way she was the spitting image of her father. Or at least, as much as Carol could remember of Shane Walsh. The years had not been kind to her memories of the man.

"Do you think we'll be safe here?"

"Yeah, for now. It'll be nice to sleep in a real bed for a couple of nights, anyway. Won't it?" Carol turned to look down the hill at the smattering of wood planked cabins; a former vacation resort that now housed a small camp of people just trying to survive. Another camp, another group calling themselves a family, another set of open doors. She wondered how many knives were hidden in the shadows, waiting to stab them in the back.

_How many walkers have you killed? How many people? Why?_

So many. God,_ so many_ people and all in the name of keeping them alive. Keeping Judith alive, if only so she could look back and say she'd managed to save one of her children. Just one. If she bothered to look back, truly look back across the years, the crimes committed for the people she'd loved in the name of survival, would there be anything left? Enough to leave a pillar of salt in remembrance of her sins? Or would there be only air, nothing left to mark the time and place she'd lived and suffered?

_That's your little girl._

"A bed sounds good," Judith sighed. Carol winced internally; she sounded so _old._ So much older than a child of six should ever have a right to sound. It was worse now that it was just the two of them. She knew she was no fit company for a child anymore.

_If it were just us... Carl and Judith, me and you... I won't have you there._

"Carol?"

"Mmhmm?"

"I miss Ty."

_Tyreese. Lori. Glenn. Maggie. Hershel. Carl. Andrea. Dale. T-Dog. Rick._ The list of people Carol missed went on forever, their faces dancing around the edges of her memory, threatening to overwhelm her at the first sign of weakness. She rarely said their names, even in the secret places of what was left of her heart. She hadn't cried in months; not even when Tyreese had finally succumbed to the arms of death and left them alone at last. There were only a handful of faces that had the power to bring her to tears. She fought against their memories harder than any of the others, knowing instinctively that the thought of them would break her hard-fought, well practiced armor and leave her a crumbling ruin. _Her girls. **Him**._

_Don't look. Don't look._

"I miss Ty too, sweetie."

"We're gonna be ok here, right?" Judith looked up at her with big eyes, full of cautious hope. _How did it come to this? Just me with this sweet child?_

"What's our rule?"

"We stick together."

"That's right," Carol managed a halfhearted smile as she folder her arms around Judith, pulling the small girl back against her legs as they turned to watch the sunset together over the frozen water. "We stick together. I think we'll be ok if we can manage that. What do you think?"

"I think so," Judith said as she snuggled back into Carol.

_Stay safe._

She'd done what she could, but Carol had the feeling she was running out of lives. It didn't matter how many lives she wasted; she had to keep going. She had to be strong. Stone. For Judith. There wasn't anyone else left now.


	2. Chapter 2

_**A/N: **__The experiment continues. This really isn't much more than me working through some emotional stuff over here. Thank you for reading._

* * *

**Chapter 2**

"Will you tell me a story tonight?"

They were curled up together in the single bed they'd been allotted, Judith's head nestled in the crook of Carol's elbow. Carol let the ghost of a smile flit across her face, remembering when _Judith_ could fit there, not just her head.

"Of course. Which one do you want to hear?" She was good at making up stories to entertain Judith. She'd had years of practice, huddled in bed with another child and telling tales to distract from the monster in the living room.

"I want to hear about home."

_Home. Pigs snorting and slurping around their makeshift pigpen. Rows of peas, stalks of corn waving in the summer wind. Handfuls of children scribbling crooked pictures on the outer walls of the cell blocks with thick hunks of chalk. A sweetly cheerful song echoing around the bars with the long afternoon shadows. _

"Not tonight, sweetie," Carol sighed.

"_Please_, Carol?" Judith actually batted her eyelashes, a newly discovered trick gleaned from watching one of the young women trying to flirt with a handsome boy at dinner. Judith had been fascinated, poking at Carol and asking what was wrong with the girl's eyes.

"Not tonight," Carol said again, her voice gentle but firm. She let her fingers tickle the little girl's stomach, earning a squeak of laughter. "How about the princess and the pirate?"

* * *

The days fell by as they managed to fall into a routine. Carol pitched in as she could, helping with odd jobs here and there, brushing off the questions from the camp's overly inquisitive members as they tried to get to know the stranger and the child they assumed was her daughter. She just smiled and bounced their own questions back to them, getting them to open up to her in a ways she'd mastered when she would show the rounds to the newbies at the prison in another life. _Learn what you could while revealing as little about yourself as possible._ So she worked, speaking as little as possible but making herself useful, just like she always had. Knowing it was the only real currency she could offer in exchange for the rare promise of shelter.

The road had not been kind to them. They'd made their shelter wherever they could along the road north: houses being the easiest to secure, but fate had sometimes found them curled up along dusty booths of cracked vinyl in an old diner or even huddled behind the counter of a 7-11. Up in trees, under bushes, hiding in abandoned cars or trucks... anywhere they could. Judith had learned early not to complain, choosing instead to simply settle down and watch with weary eyes as Carol and, in the early days Tyreese, worked out where to go next. It never mattered to Carol where they went, as long as they kept moving. It was really the only goal they'd had. Like that fish from the movie... _Just keep swimming. _

Once in a while she could hear the voice of her daughter singing the songs in her head; distorted and faded with time, but still there. Still singing, somewhere in her head.

Sometimes she wondered if she had finally gone crazy, if this was all just a dream being lived in her head. What would life have to be like for her mind to decide _this_ was the better alternative to live?

On the third day, they woke up to four inches of snow, stuck hard and fast to the cold ground and showing no signs of melting. Carol knew they would be stuck at the little camp throughout the winter now and went to Decker, the ring leader of this motley group of survivors, to ask to be put on the next run. She wasn't surprised when he shot her down, citing a dozen other reasons but knowing it was because she was a stranger, unfamiliar and therefore dangerous. It didn't sting like it used to. At least he'd agreed to make sure the list of supplies she had in mind would be scouted out.

"Tell me a story."

Carol brushed Judith's bang off her forehead and smiled down at the child in her lap.

"What shall it be tonight?"

"Tell me about home?" There really were only so many times she could refuse the little girl.

_Carl, tall and gangly in his oversized sheriff's hat, furtively sneaking peeks at his newest comic under the table while he pretended to eat. Michonne doing chin ups at the far end of the yard. But most of all, sitting next to her and licking his fingers after each bite of food, Dar... No. No._

Judith was gazing up at her with her sweet, clear eyes, her face scrubbed fresh from her bath. Carol had killed to protect that face; had made blood, hot and sticky, spill over her hands, made grown men scream, slashed her way through hundreds of walkers, all in the name of keeping this one child, her last child, alive. And suddenly, a memory sprang up, long forgotten in the wake of time: Maggie, sitting at the edge of an old prison bunk. _He was determined not to lose anyone else, so we left on the motorcycle to look for baby supplies..._

Carol wasn't the only one who'd fought to keep Judith alive.

"Did I ever tell you how you got your nickname, Lil' Ass-Kicker?"

* * *

More snow came day after day, piling on top of the previous day's drifts until Carol found herself sinking to her knees in fine white powder. She'd simply grabbed a shovel and scooped out walkways with everyone else, leaving walls two to three feet high on either side. The silence between everyone was thick and heavy. The run group should have been back days ago, but there had been no sign of them.

"Carol, lookit!"

Judith was leap-frogging from one pile of snow to another, sending showers of snowflakes scattering into the wind in her wake. Carol found herself laughing despite herself, the stone walls she'd erected around herself over the years found weak in the face of such sweet, simple joy of a child playing in the snow. Her child. Carol kept laughing until as Judith threw herself onto a gentle slope of snow and spread her arms and legs, sweeping them back and forth.

It struck her like lightning as Judith jumped up, leaving the sloppy imprint of a snow angel behind her that reminded her of tattered angel wings stitched on weathered black leather, one of the names she'd forced into a tiny box and shoved into the back corners of her mind. _Daryl. _

_The soft purr of the motorcycle as they drove along empty road, the wind rushing past her ears and the ends of his hair tickling her nose. The sharp zing, the faint tint of iron in the air as he sharpened his knives while she finally stitched the knee in his threadbare pants. Walking slow along the fences on days when the walker population seemed almost nonexistent, so close together their shoulders bumped as they walked and she could feel the heat from his skin as the sun set in the distance. Daryl._

She knew Judith was calling out to her, pointing out the trucks in the distance, the mob of people rushing to greet those finally returned from the long run. She didn't see any of it, the world blending into a blob of colors smeared like a child's fingerpainting behind the tall, dark clothed figure who stood stock still in the middle of their makeshift road. _I'm imagining things. _

There was a large satchel bag tossed carelessly at his feet, but it was the crossbow, dropped careless atop the bag from limp fingers in surprise, that caught the barest glimpse of her attention. _This isn't real. _

It was the eyes, wide with shock, that shade of blue she'd never seen on anyone else, that anchored her as much as they set her adrift with surprise of her own. Eyes she never thought she'd see again, as if the mere thought of his name finally skittering through her mind had summoned him to her side.

"Carol?!" Judith was at her side now, nervous and tugging on the leg of her jeans. "Who is that man?"

_Oh my god. This is real._ Her voice found its way out of her throat.

"_Daryl_," Carol said. A thousand miles of life, of loss, grief, regret and the tiniest bit of joy was packed into that one word, his name leaping out of her as effortlessly as it ever had despite years of unuse.

"_Carol,_" Daryl answered back.


End file.
